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Europeana DSI-2

Europeana Education is an initiative to embed Europe's digital cultural heritage in education. Its digitized collection of cultural heritage - from 43 countries and searchable in 23 languages - can provide multiple perspectives on historical, political, economic, cultural, and human developments across Europe and beyond. As part of the Europeana DSI-2 project, European Schoolnet carried out a validation pilot involving 20 teachers (one primary and one secondary teacher per country) from ten different European countries (Czech Republic, Greece, Portugal, Austria, Ireland, Estonia, Italy, Finland, France and Hungary).

The goal of the pilot was to learn how to mainstream the use of Europeana collections amongst educators and to provide policy makers and teachers with insights on ‘HOW' Europeana resources can support innovative pedagogical practice. The project evaluation is based on feedback from teachers of the two pilot phases, obtained via two online surveys.

From November 2016 to June 2017, the 20 pilot teachers developed and tested pedagogical scenarios and learning activities that incorporate Europeana content. During two workshops in the Future Classroom Lab in Brussels, teachers learned how to search the Europeana platform. Two pilot phases followed each training, during which teachers developed their pedagogical scenario and learning activities further in their own classrooms, and engaged their colleagues and school staff in using Europeana material. The scenarios and learning activities have been made available under Creative Commons licenses and have been integrated in the Future Classroom Lab Directory of professional development resources for teachers.

"I used the Europeana Exhibition Project to connect students' prior knowledge, life experience and personal life with our learning goal (for example interviews with family members, friends)."

Teachers wishing to incorporate Europeana in their lessons can read the guide to using Europeana in education, which presents tips on how to find the best content for the classroom and information on copyright and crediting. Teachers can also browse other resources before searching the platform for what they need. There are also numerous websites and applications that present Europeana content in an educational and creative way.

The Europeana DSI-2 project is followed by Europeana DSI-3, which started on 1 September 2018 and will finalize in August 2018. The DSI-3 project is looking for 18 teachers from 6 European countries to form a Developer Group in order to produce datasets, pedagogical scenarios and learning activities using the Europeana Collections, as well as open sources and professional development materials for teachers. The selected teachers from Finland, France, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain (3 teachers per country, two in secondary and one in primary education) must cover a range of disciplines and curriculum topics between October 2017 to June 2018.

DSI-2 workshops

First DSI-2 workshop, November 2016

Twenty teachers of all disciplines from 10 EU countries took part in a workshop — from 28-29 November 2016, led and hosted by European Schoolnet (EUN) in Brussels — to help them better understand how educators are engaging with, searching for and using digital cultural heritage content.

During this workshop, teachers were introduced to some of the best techniques for finding content. As practical exercise during the workshop, teachers had to choose a theme and find related content from either art history or the First World War on Europeana using a variety of media — from exhibitions to letters to videos — and to create a learning activity exploring that theme and present this to the group. Find more information about the workshop in the dedicated blog post.

Following the workshop, the teachers started the 1st pilot phase of the programme (December 2016-February 2017) by returning to their school to further communicate and develop the learning activities such as: presenting Europeana at school, integrating Europeana data in the classroom, organize a class activity, etc. The 1st pilot ended up with an online meeting on 6-7 February 2017 when the 20 pilot teachers from across 10 European countries shared their work done so far in the project.

Second DSI-2 workshop, February 2017

The 2nd Europeana DSI2 workshop "Magic in the classroom", led and hosted by European Schoolnet in Brussels, took place on the 27-28 February 2017 in the Future Classroom Lab (FCL) introducing to teachers digital tools for tours, exhibitions and e-learning.

During these two days, the twenty teachers involved in the pilot are developing pedagogical scenarios, which will be tested with their students upon their return to the school. Additionally, short videos of teachers have been taken during the workshop to share their experience with the project and use as good practices in future online trainings. Find more information about the workshop in the dedicated blog post.

Rethinking teaching and learning

The Future Classroom Lab is created by European Schoolnet, its supporting 30 ministries and industry partners to help visualise how conventional classrooms and other learning spaces can be easily reorganised to support changing styles of teaching and learning.